Policy Brief
Democratic accountability of Russian regional governments: Do Elections
Matter?
Table of contents:
Introduction
Electoral accountability of the regional governments – theoretical expectations
and empirical overview
Possible reasons for limited ability of elections to induce accountability
in contemporary Russian regions
Parliamentary structures and regulatory frameworks
Accountability and legislative process in the regional assemblies
Development of party systems and accountability
Parties in legislatures
Electoral rules and party formation
Policy recommendations
Introduction
The working definition of accountability of the regional government draws
on the broader definition, provided by Schmitter, accountability being ‘a
relationship between two sets of actors, in which the former accepts to inform
the other, explain or justify his or her action and submit to any pre-determined
that the latter may impose (2004, 5) implies an interaction between it and
population. It describes not only the obligation of that government for explanation
and justification of their use of delegated power, but also implies that
the population is capable, using certain instruments and under certain conditions,
of holding it accountable. Governments are accountable if their electorate
has sufficient powers and means of discerning the responsive/unaccountable
performance and sanctioning or rewarding them accordingly, in other words,
if the performance of politicians influences their chances of being re-elected.
Electoral accountability is better achieved over relatively long time spans,
containing at least one but ideally several electoral terms. Over this period
we may observe whether ‘bad’ politicians are detected by the citizens and
voted out of the office, while ‘good’ ones are re-elected. Such a pattern
will suggest that this particular government is accountable via elections
to its constituents.
Elections are the tools designed for the population to hold government officials
accountable, and the current project seeks to establish which elements of
the electoral systems are essential in this task. There is, however, debate
as to how effective different electoral systems are in promoting accountability,
particularly in transition countries. To assess whether and how accountability
mechanisms have worked in one specific context, the strategies involved and
their consequences, I examine evidence from recent Russian regional politics,
utilising empirical data obtained via survey of experts in regional politics
(2004), and from other available sources. Results show that levels of accountability
are not affected by differences in electoral systems (PR or majoritarian)
per se, but by different categories of proportional representation and plurality
elections, as well as the different types of parliamentary structures . Therefore,
by extending the debate over the electoral systems to a fresh perspective,
the research contributes to the better understanding of the regional governance,
and provides useful guidelines for electoral designers.
The Federal Law "On Basic Guarantees of Citizens' Electoral Rights”, enacted
in 1994, established a loose legal framework for the regional electoral systems.
Regional governments obtained the rights to choose the electoral systems
(PR or majoritarian), select the size of the legislative assembly, the threshold
level, the rules for the formation of the party list, the method of the distribution
of the public mandates, and the choice between open and closed lists. As
a result, the political map of Russian regions encompasses a wide variety
of the electoral systems and parliamentary structures. The electoral reform
law, enacted in 2003, stipulated that at least half of deputies must affiliate
and run as candidates on federal party lists and nominally vote for the programs
and policies of their parties. At the time of the completion of the research,
out of eighty-nine regions, forty-eight are still facing a challenging task
of transforming their electoral system from single member plurality to a
mix of single member plurality and list PR. This policy paper targets decision-makers
in those Russian regions who actively launched the process of re-engineering
their set of the rules for regional elections in order to assist them in
developing a new regulatory framework that will enhance the democratic accountability
of elected officials. The target group of the project consists of decision-makers
in those regional governments that are already fully engaged in preparing
regional legislation for the elections which are to be held in the twelve
months following the publication of the project, namely Adygeya, Altai, Dagestan
and Buryatia republics, Khabarovskii and Stavropolskii krais, Belgorodskaya,
Ivanovskaya, Kostromskaya, Kurskaya, Lipetskaya, Nizhegorodskaya, Novosibirskaya,
Samarskaya, Chelyabinskaya oblasts and the city of Moscow.
Electoral accountability of the regional governments – theoretical expectations
and empirical overview
As noted above, accountability is a property of interaction between citizenry
and government, and the outcome of this interaction is responsiveness and
openness, or lack of it. The presence or absence of responsiveness and openness
is thus a measure of how accountable the government is (Ferejohn 1999: 131).
Bearing this in mind, I measured the openness of governments by conducting
a survey of experts in regions. The purpose of the survey was to find the
answer to the core question of the project: Is there a causal relationship
between electoral system and political accountability, and if yes, which
electoral system induces greater accountability of the regional governments?
Dominant political theories point out that the plurality rule is more inductive
for vertical accountability (Powell, 1982, Blais and Dion, 1990, Persson,
Tabellini and Trebbi, 2001), since a plurality system tends to produce a
one-party majority government. One of the merits of one-party government
is its greater decisiveness, and the unambiguous effects of the decisions
it makes on the fate of the party in power. This type of government holds
its responsibility for policy decisions primarily to the electorate: if the
party loses the support of the voter, it loses office as an outcome of the
next elections. In coalition governments, in contrast, which are likely to
be a result of the PR formula, ‘the fate of the party in a coalition has
more to do with internal dynamic of that coalition than with the party’s
electoral fortune’ (Blais, 1991, 242).
Given the conditions of underdevelopment of parties in Russia, however, one
cannot speak of legislative majorities being established on party bases.
As Irvine puts it, ‘plurality systems make it easier for the voter to bring
about a qualitative change in the way he is governed’ (1979, 25). However,
the expectation that greater responsibility will be a consequence of plurality
rule, and blurred responsibility a consequence of proportional representation,
has been shown to be false. Moser (1999) provided evidence to show that under
conditions of extreme party underdevelopment, proportional representation
may in fact be more successful than the plurality system in constraining
the number of parties and providing greater political stability and ‘clarity
of responsibility’. The fragmented character and low institutionalisation
of the Russian party system provide grounds for a hypothesis which runs counter
to the aforementioned conventional wisdom: List PR can be more inductive
for accountability of regional governments.
The survey revealed that the regions varied significantly in their levels
of accountability; however, the choice between the electoral systems had
no discernable influence on accountable performance. The question can
therefore be reformulated as follows: How much of accountability of regional
governments in Russia is induced by elections, and how much by other institutions?
Possible reasons for limited ability of elections to induce accountability
in contemporary Russian regions
In the contemporary literature on accountability, the concept of mechanisms
of electoral accountability has indeed been described as constrained by several
limitations:
1. There is informational asymmetry, in that voters generally have a serious
informational disadvantage in comparison to politicians.
2. Elections are too crude an instrument to hold governments accountable:
voters have only one blunt act (re-elect or do not re-elect) to express their
attitude to the whole range of policies; this gives the government an opportunity
to avoid responsibility by grouping unpopular with popular policy choices.
3. Incentives to be re-elected are not always present due to limitations
on re-eligibility.
4. Voter’s ability to assign the responsibility for distinct acts of the
government is limited, as it is difficult to figure out which branch/party/individual
politician is chargeable for an erroneous or unpopular decision. Accountability
becomes obscured especially in the case of coalition government and presidential
systems. According to Powell (2000), electoral institutions that induce majority
governments are better accountability devices, due to increased ‘clarity
of responsibility’.
5. The costs of the monitoring and assessing governmental performance may
be too high, and expertise to make informed judgements lacking.
6. Prospective appraisal significantly offsets retrospective evaluation:
except in cases of massive abuse of public office, voters are less interested
in retrospectively punishing/rewarding past performance than in prospective
selection of promising behaviour/candidates (Fearon, 1999).
7. Voters, as shown by surveys, are only sporadically involved in politics,
and are subject to political manipulation (Page and Shapiro 1992)
In general, then, the ability of voters to observe and evaluate the actions
of politicians and correctly interpret whether these are in the interest
of public is severely limited. Thus it can be claimed, with Fearon, that
‘electoral accountability is not in principle necessary for elections to
produce responsive public policy’ (1999: 59).
Parliamentary structures and regulatory frameworks
The results of statistical analysis show that the level of accountability
is entirely unrelated to the electoral system used, and elections by themselves
are unsatisfactory instruments to provide citizens with responsible and accountable
governments. What then are the other devices to keep state power under control?
The current literature on accountability incorporates the notion of horizontal
accountability, or the ‘capacity of state institutions to check abuses by
other public agencies and branches of government’ (Schedler 1999:3), which
constrain and monitor each other. A particular feature of Russian regional
politics is the widespread dominance of the executive branch in the decision-making
process. Recent research reveals that the arbitrary and undemocratic action
in the Russian hinterlands stems primarily from the regional executive branch
(McFaul and Petrov 1998, Turovskii 2002, Gelman 2002). The concept of horizontal
accountability is not restricted to intrastate relations (Schmitter, 1999:
59-62), but includes a system of institutions standing outside government,
responsible for watching and checking the policy process in government.
According to recent literature on delegation and accountability (Powell 2000,
Strom 2003, Schedler and Diamond 1999) executive bureaucrats are in agency
relations with the legislature. Legislative assembles also experience an
informational disadvantage in observing executive actions, but unlike citizens,
the legislature has some extra means of holding the executive accountable.
Depending on the constitutional provisions, legislative assemblies have more
sophisticated instruments of accountability to employ against the other branch.
Sanctioning is not limited to election periods, as in the case when the principal
is an electorate, but can be applied at any time after the contract is adopted.
Not only is the legislature not constrained in time, it is also not left
with a single stark choice between re-electing and throwing out of office.
It can utilize an additional type of sanction along with dismissal, which
is punishing while retaining the executive as an agent (Elster, 1999, 254).
Punishment without dismissal gives the executive room to improve its performance.
Moreover, in this case, even within one term, the accountability mechanism
includes ‘incapacitation’, along with the ‘deterrence’ dimension, which deprive
the executive of the possibility of avoiding accountability for unpopular
or incompetent decisions by mixing them with worthy or popular ones.
Bearing in mind that the primary concern of horizontal accountability in
Russian governments ought to be focused, in words of Schmitter, on ‘keeping
the executive in check’(1999:60), I analysed regional constitutions and charters
of the forty-three regions included in the survey, looking for clauses that
enable the legislative branch to oversee the activities of the executive.
Among various articles of the regional charters and constitutions, those
pertaining to legislative checks over the executive were detected mostly
in the chapters devoted to the Legislative Assemblies, and sometimes to the
executive branch as well. As a rule, all the charters include sections and
articles on the principles of formation and organisational structure of the
assembly, eligibility of the candidates as MPs, rights and obligations of
deputies, rules of election and resignation of individual members and the
assembly as a whole. The most informative section from the point of view
of the interactions between the branches of the government proved to be the
one pinpointing the authoritative powers of the legislature. The analysed
documents show almost complete uniformity in outlining the range of legislative
documents required for legislative approval. They includes the main law of
the region, namely the constitution or the charter itself, the laws regulating
the affairs pertaining to the jurisdiction of the region, and laws regulating
the affairs of joint jurisdiction between the federal and regional government.
The most variation was observed in the sections that specify the areas of
the legislative lawmaking: firstly, the structure of the section varied.
Though in most cases, the charter designers designated separately the areas
regulated by law (zakon) and statute (postanovlenie), some did not. Some
regions have areas where legislatures exercise legislative control, written
in a separate Article, while most do not. Secondly, there was considerable
diversity in the content and wording of the specific rights in the area of
appointment powers of the legislature. While in all the constitutions and
charters the powers of the assembly to appoint justices of the peace and
judges of the Constitutional (Charter) courts, where they exist, and half
of the central electoral commissions were stated uniformly, the rights to
ratify the appointment of the Vice-governor, and a range of the key ministers
in the government (second vices) were not affirmed unvaryingly.
In some charters the right was worded in an assertive and straightforward
way: the right to give permission for the appointment and resignation (дача
согласия на назначение и освобождение); in others the wording was less affirmative:
participate in consultations on formation of the cabinet (участвует в формировании
путем консультаций), in yet others the right was not mentioned at all. The
right to remove a governor and government through impeachment procedure was
also far from being a uniform right of the legislature: while some mentioned
the right to vote no-confidence only in the governor, others extend this
right to the government as well. A further discrepancy between the charters
was observed in the area of procedural regulations. While most of the documents
in question were conscientious in outlining the rights of the legislature
to override the governor’s veto, and specifying the conditions (usually a
veto can be overridden by a two-thirds majority of the legislature), some
fell short in this respect.
The accountability of the executive branch is higher in regional parliaments
that hold more institutionalised powers to keep the executive in check. Institutionalisation
prevents the fusion of parliamentary majorities and the chief executive,
which destroys conditions for accountability by imposing a severe informational
problem upon citizens (Strom et al. 2003, King 1976) and leads to adoption
of bad policies, since legislatures are ready to pass all proposals initiated
by the executive.
Accountability and legislative process in the regional assemblies
In many regions legislative assemblies have committees with muddled boundaries
and sometimes overlapping responsibilities, led by hostile partisan opponents,
which provoked legislative conflict, thus leading to recurrent procedural
breakdowns. It is sensible to assume that frequent and massive absence of
MPs while voting, and a chronically gridlocked assembly are both detrimental
to the accountability of a government, while the presence of opposition,
beneficial. By being a competitor, the opposition has greater incentives
to monitor closely government performance and helps citizens to overcome
information asymmetry (Manin, et al. 1999). Additionally, the presence of
viable opposition gives a government greater incentives to be more responsible
in its behaviour.
If we turn to the analysis of the accountability of the legislature, two
factors appear to be salient for accountable performance: occurrences of
no quorum, when deputies block passage of bills by leaving the floor or failing
to turn up to sessions with a controversial agenda, are negatively influence
accountability, while the greater role of the deputies in initiating legislation,
and subsequently, a greater share of the bills initiated by them, positively
influences it.
The analysis reveals that there is a significant correlation between the
occurrences of no-quorum and the frequency of anonymous voting. It shows
that those legislatures that more often used anonymous voting were also those
which suffer from frequent failure of the deputy corpus to gather the number
of deputies necessary to vote on a bill. While the correlation may be spurious,
one can find common grounds for both patterns: anonymous voting, as well
as lack of any institutional constraints on deputies to ignore their duties
to attend the sessions are indicators of lack of transparency in legislative
affairs, which is detrimental to accountability. The second factor connected
to the willingness of deputies to exploit the no-quorum mechanism is that
there is no established forum for conflict resolution.
The survey also shows that legislatures that have a greater share of the
newcomers are less successful in keeping the executive branch in check than
those assemblies which are stable in their composition. It is interesting
to note that accountability of the legislature itself is negligibly influenced
by turnover of deputies. Therefore it is plausible to suspect that the majority
of newcomers have particular relations with the executive and governor, namely
patron-client relations. The evidence supports this hypothesis. As noted
by several analysts, the governor and his circle are increasingly becoming
dominating actors in electoral process in the regions (Turovskii, Kynev).
In contrast to the earlier practice where a governor supported only one party,
or one ‘list’ of candidates, now governors can support several parties (as
was the case in recent elections in Arkhangelsk oblast, Tula oblast, Khakassia),
or governor’s candidates may even dominate all party lists, with the exception
of the marginal parties, doomed to lose (as in Chitinskaya oblast, Tatarstan,
Mordovia). These practices ensure the governor’s allies hold a parliamentary
majority in the legislatures. This proposition is further supported by the
outcome of the statistical analysis: the correlation coefficient between
the turnover and the presence of the governor’s list has a positive sign.
The fusion of the executive and legislative elites is detrimental for the
accountability of government, as such legislatures are inclined to indiscriminately
pass the bills initiated by a governor, and makes unpopular policies easy
to pass.
The results of the analysis demonstrated that the condition most likely to
positively influence the level of accountability of both branches is a co-ordinated
and balanced relationship between them. The second condition that proved
favourable for accountability of both branches is when a governor did not
officially or unofficially inform the electorate about his special support
for a number of candidates to the legislative assembly. These two outcomes
highlight the importance of the sustaining the balance of powers in the government,
and diluting the presence of the pro-governmental coalition in the legislature.
The evidence from the survey and other sources shows that there is discernible
variation in the accountability of regional governments, and that observers
can distinguish between the openness of the different branches. The statistical
analysis of the survey data revealed several potential institutional factors
to which the executive and legislative branches demonstrate coherent and
pronounced sensitivity. On the basis of these findings, the final section
of this paper puts forward several policy proposals. However, it can be difficult
to find straightforward policy proposals that ensure that both branches work
in a co-operative way and the corpus of governor’s supporters does not dominate
the parliament. It may prove impossible to find effective mechanisms that
will dilute the concentration of pro-governmental allies in regional assemblies
and shift the allegiance from resting predominantly on pro-governor’s regional
elite to the other political organizations. It has been suggested that, for
governors, PR elections are more difficult to manipulate (Moser, 2003,
39), and that the introduction of this system will create centres of power
independent from the regional executives and reinforce the legislative check
on the governors and administration, constraining arbitrary use of the administrative
resources. However, the present research found that electoral rules did not
influence accountability in any discernable way.
Perhaps, one of the potential factors that distort the causal chain connecting
elections to accountability lies in the degree of development of parties.
In Western democracies, where institutionalization of parties occurs to a
far greater degree than in the Russian case, different rules of elections
produce different outcomes pertaining to the accountable performance of government.
In the Russian regions, the correlation is confounded by the extreme underdevelopment
of the party systems. It is plausible to infer that one of the possible causes
for the low accountability of the governments dominated by executives may
be the inability of the parties to withstand the competition with pro-governor
parties in elections, or prevent the invasion of candidates backed by the
governor. This hypothesis calls for more comprehensive analysis of the party
systems in the regions, and investigation of how party systems help or hinder
the electoral competition.
Development of party systems and accountability
The development of parties in many Russian regions happened in a distorted
way, so that the usual criteria fail to indicate the strength or weakness
of the individual parties in the regions. The floating, unstable character
of regional party systems, the volatility of voter preferences, the development
of parties from top down, and erratic party membership may have obstructed
the causal chain between accountability and party development. This section
will consider the development of party systems in federation and regions,
and identify the potential drawbacks of the system that prevented the parties
from playing a greater role in ensuring the accountability of regional governments.
Many scholars have pointed out that the Russian partisan map is highly fragmented,
parties poorly institutionalised, and party identification of the voters
unstable. Many factors militated against the emergence of a stable party
system: the intrinsic weakness of civil society, social fragmentation, the
rise of alternative forms of interest representation, anti-party attitudes
among the electorate, and electoral rules. Social atomisation as a consequence
of communist rule prevented the rise of interest politics; the legacies of
patrimonial communism undermined political parties by supporting personalistic
and clientelistic networks; and the organisational characteristics of the
democratic movement allowed its legacies to be viewed as 'anti-party' (Golosov,
2000). At the same time, the legacies of the perestroika-era political mobilisation
have led to the emergence of the non-political entrepreneurship of the elite,
and to a territorially diffuse mode of party formation (Gelman and Golosov,
1999).
Federal parties had affiliations in a majority of regions, however only few
of them can be described as strong independent organisations based on well-established
societal cleavage structures . Significantly, continuing parties are very
few, with only four uninterruptedly participating in all four electoral cycles,
namely KPRF, APR, LDPR, and DPR. Legislators' and governors' party affiliations
are unstable, and deputies frequently switch allegiance. This is the case
with many legislators, both at federal and regional level . Not only do they
change affiliation between factions and deputy groups, they sometimes switch
from one party to another. Major and frequent individual re-alignments contribute
to a situation where some legislatures end up with a faction structure entirely
different from the one they started the term with. Needless to say, this
personalised practice impedes the effective performance of the legislature,
and damages the credibility of the regional assembly and the legitimacy of
the party competition.
Many regional parties can be portrayed as small, unstable personality cliques
(Ostrow, 1999: 231), with quite narrow goals, mostly focused on elections.
The elaboration of developmental plans, the nomination of gubernatorial candidates,
and participation in presidential elections are not on the political agenda
of these parties. Even though such parties contested in more than 80% of
regions, the share of the seats they won was small (13%, 22% and 14% in three
successive electoral cycles). At regional and local level, high voter volatility
and lack of party identification led to the strong personalisation of party
politics and a pervasive practice of patron-client relations . Even for the
KPRF, whose electorate is still sensitive to the party label in their voter
choice, supporting a charismatic leader has become a decisive factor (Turovskii,
2003). To illustrate, in Sverdlovsk oblast', no matter how the parties
were named, the major political struggle was waged between governor Rossell
and the mayor of the capital city of the oblast', Chernetsky . A similar
situation occurred in Krasnoyarsk, where the opposition between Uss and Lebed
was framed into a struggle between the blocks established by the federal
parties. The subordination of the regional branches to the federal centre
was weak in these regions, and the electorate was aware which of these parties
and blocks represented which regional elite groups, not the other way around.
In other regions, parties straightforwardly use the names of their leaders
in the title of electoral blocks: 'Blok Bykova', 'Za Lebedya', 'Blok
Zubova'. Such parties, based on the strength and charismatic personality
of one man, often lack serious programs, sound policy proposals, and clear
political standpoints. Hence, personified parties lose the ability to represent
important societal strata and fail to provide orientation or serve as an
object of a political identification.
According to Rose and Munro, the development of parties is a key predicament
for the accountability of governments. They outline five requirements for
the elections to be an instrument of accountability (2002, 101):
1. Rather than acting individually, political actors form parties to appeal
for votes in elections
2. Parties nominate candidates nation-wide, rather than locally
3. National party candidates, rather than the candidates from the local,
regional parties or independents win the majority of seats
4. Parties nominate candidates for all elected offices
5. Parties persist from one election to another.
These requirements were designed for the analysis of central governments,
but they can be applied, with some alternations, to the regional level as
well. One of the main differences will concern the second and third requirements.
Stepping down one level, parties can be both national and regional as long
as they are not local groups differing from one district to another. In the
Russian case, neither regional parties nor federal branches of the nation-wide
parties (except the KPRF) played a central role in regional elections. It
was regional blocks of the federal and regional parties and political movements
that actively participate in elections. These electoral blocks were active
across the whole territory of a region; therefore they meet the second requirement
and the first part of the third. However, the first requirement is seriously
violated. Throughout the decade, individuals nominated themselves or were
nominated directly by electorate (neposredstvenno izbiratelyami) far more
often than parties.
The scope of party activities in executive elections was low throughout the
entire decade: out of 459 and 562 candidates who contested the second and
third cycles of gubernatorial elections, only 74 and 46 of them respectively
were partisan nominees (Golosov, 2003, 71). Moreover, party nominees tend
to be less successful than independents: only 7% of them were successful,
as compared to independents, who won in 13% of cases. Political parties play
a considerably greater role in legislative than in executive elections: while
party-nominated candidates in gubernatorial elections ran only in 36.8% of
regions and won only in 7%, partisan nominees for the legislative posts contested
elections in 89% of regions and won seats in 67% of regional legislatures.
(Golosov, 2003, 71-79). However, the percentage of party nominees in the
total number of candidates is very low: from 0.5% in Buryatia to 40% in Sverdlovskaya
obl., with an average of 17% for all the regions .
The fourth requirement necessitates that parties nominate candidates for
all elected offices. As there are only two elected offices in the Russian
regional politics, and in a majority of cases parties do nominate their candidates
for legislative seats, we should look into the data for nominations for governors
more closely. During the 1997-2000 regional executive elections, out of 766
candidates nominated for the office, 522 (68%) were nominated directly by
electorate, 189 (25%) by themselves, and only 55 (7%) were party nominees.
Parties did not nominate candidates for executive office at all in such regions
as Kemerovskaya oblast and Komi in 1997, Buryatia, Ingushetia, in 1998,
Belgorodskaya and Vologodskaya oblast, Primorskii krai in 1999, Altaiskii
and Stavropolskii krai, Arkhangelskaya, Voronezhskaya, Ivanovskaya , Kaluzhskaya,
Kirovskaya, Kostromskaya, Kurganskaya, Lipetskaya, Magadanskaya and Volgoradskaya
oblast, Udmurtiya, Khakkasia, Marii El in 2000. All in all, out of 74 executive
elections taking place in this period, in 42, parties and electoral blocks
failed to nominate their candidates, while for the legislative elections
for the same period only 10% of the regions failed to do so. Therefore, the
fourth requirement can be seen not to hold for the majority of the Russian
regions.
The second part of the third criterion is also violated, since in the majority
of the regions parties win a minority of seats. Even though parties contested
in more than 80% of regions, the share of the seats they won was quite insignificant.
Therefore, in a majority of Russian regions the elections fail to function
as mechanisms of accountability because of the underdevelopment of parties.
Parties in legislatures
In the majority of regional legislatures, party participation in elections
was lower than party representation after elections in the already working
assemblies. This fact can be explained by several factors. Some regions demonstrated
an astonishing increase in the partisanship of the regional legislatures:
from zero to 100% in Magadan oblast, from zero to 67% in Kalmykia, or from
3% to 72% in Kabardino-Balkaria. Almost all regions where this pattern was
observed belong to the category of autocratic or semi-autocratic regimes,
and party participation can be explained by clan and corporatist interests,
rather than indicating the strength of the party in the region or reflecting
mass attitudes. This practice can be explained as a consequence of the fact
that in Russia the definition of party in the legislature differs in the
most cases from the ballot definition.
In the observed regions, a different number of deputies are allowed to form
a faction, or deputy group, the rights and obligations of the deputy groups
also differ from one legislature to another. For accountability to work,
it is necessary for MPs to be stable in their party affiliations, but in
Russian regional parliaments this is rarely the case. In all forty-three
regions, sanctions against deputies changing their affiliation were observed
in no regional assembly regulations. Elected candidates have no constraints
in changing their party affiliation throughout the period of their service
in parliament. The volatility of their policy preferences is detrimental
for accountability as voters will not be able to map deputies’ responsibility
in decisions made by the parliament Moreover, not only do they change factions
and deputy groups in accordance with their own changed political stance,
but some use this as a bargaining chip in a pursuit of personal gains.
What are the institutional conditions for this? In a majority of regional
legislatures deputies can initiate and prepare their policy proposals and
lobby them individually within the committees or directly on the plenary
session. This feature intensifies the fragmentation and diffuse character
of the assemblies, which in turn furthers particularistic interests (Chaisty,
2001). The weak commitment of the individual deputies to the faction they
belong to, and to programmatic principles, create a fertile soil for informal
activities such as corruption and clientelism. The closeness of the deputies
to the decision-making centres when no legal transparent mechanism for lobbying
interests exists makes them susceptible to corruption by powerful regional
economic elites. As noted by Kiselev, several MPs in the Sverdlovsk regional
Duma are notorious of their unscrupulousness, and party factions bid for
their support in controversial bills by offering them higher rewards (interview,
2004).
Electoral rules and party formation
The effects of electoral rules on party formation in Russia have been analysed
by several scholars (Moser, Golosov, Hutcheson, etc.). There seems to be
general agreement that a mixed, unconnected system with the two halves of
the Duma elected by different rules, and seats not compensated, splits elections
into two separate campaigns. While the first favours strong federal parties
with a widely spread electorate, the second promotes the emergence of small
personified parties. These contradictory incentives produced a situation
distinctive for Russia where two different sets of parties exist, those who
are winners in single-member districts, and those who win predominantly on
the party lists. As Moser (2001: 43) observes, with the exception of the
KPRF, these two sets do not overlap, though more recently United Russia has
been present in both sets too.
The development of parties has been influenced by the first-past-the-post
rule, used for the elections to the most of the regional legislatures, and
by the two-round majority rule, used for the election of the president of
the federation and the vast majority of regional chief executives, since
candidates are discouraged from running under the banner of a party. To be
able to cover as wide an electoral base as possible, candidates preferred
not to affiliate themselves with any party, or even to hide any affiliation
they may happen to have. This applies to all parties with the exception of
KPRF.
The particular configuration of electoral systems in individual regions emerged
largely as a product of the bargaining of the elites at regional level, rather
than the result of directives or pressures from the federal authorities (Golosov
2003: 211). Frequently in the period from 1993 to 1996, incumbent governors
used their influence over regional assemblies in drafting the regulations
for elections to bias the outcome in their favour: they used their offices
and public officials for unofficial electoral campaigning; and also often
manipulated the time of elections, length of campaigns and electoral threshold
to suit their interests and to the disadvantage of opposing candidates (Moses,
2003, 151) .
The electoral reform law, enacted in 2003, changed the electoral system from
predominantly single member plurality, to a mix of single member plurality
and list PR, stipulating that at least half of deputies must affiliate and
run as candidates on federal party lists and nominally vote for the programs
and policies of their parties. This reform is aimed at enhancing the independence
of regional legislatures as a counter-balance against governors. By changing
the incentives of politicians to run for seats in regional assemblies, it
will potentially shift the entire dynamic of the executive-legislative relations
(Moses, 2003). Federal government sought firstly to buttress the party system
by forcing parties to diversify, and to centralise control over the regions.
The latter was supposed to be done via the factions of United Russia (UR)
in regional legislature. By the end of 2003, with only four regions using
the mixed electoral system, seventy-eight regions have at least one deputy
in their legislative corpus, and forty-seven have factions of the party of
power. However the efforts of the Kremlin to subordinate the party system
to the executive vertical via the promotion of UR as a party of power were
undermined and in several regions United Russia failed to produce a sizable
portion of legislative seats. This is due to both federal and regional factors.
Not only are federal policies backed by UR leaders becoming unpopular, but
also regional elites are refusing to support the party label, openly or secretly
(Khakassia) undermining its credibility. Secondly, it was believed that a
list PR system would give parties incentives to participate in regional elections
and give party factions a more institutionalised role in the regional political
system. Whether introduction of the proportional representation rule promote
parties' penetration not only in space, to larger number of territories,
but also in depth, enabling them to play a more active role in power politics,
is discussed below.
The introduction of the PR system is intended to promote competitiveness
in the regional political arena. There is serious evidence to show that the
introduction of the PR list system bolstered formal party activities, creating
sham party branches existing only on paper, rather than society-based strengthening
of the party system from the grass-roots level. The reform instigates the
diffusion of the national parties, making one party brand include diverse
political formations in different regions. In the words of Kynev, parties
are converting themselves into merely technological mechanisms (2004).
Policy Proposals
a) The first device for parliaments that are to prone to conflict and deadlock
is to establish recurrent 'roundtable' negotiations among leaders of political
factions, involving also members of the government and representatives from
public organisations, if necessary. In the absence of established fora for
inter-committee co-ordination, this informal consultative mechanism can prevent
highly contentious issues from paralysing the legislative process. It also
can help the factions to hammer out face-saving compromises that have better
chances afterwards of being passed in the full chamber.
b) Since in many legislatures a high share of the bills is initiated by a
governor, in order to avoid gridlocks, it is necessary to launch 'big-three'
negotiations involving a governor, a vice-governor, and the chair of the
parliament. This informal channel of negotiation will make it possible to
find a compromise in highly divisive issues; I can give a governor a reliable
estimate of the balance of power within an assembly, and revise bills accordingly.
In addition to these ad hoc consultative fora, both governor and government
are advised to establish permanent liaison offices in parliament. The aim
of these institutions is to observe and manage day-to-day legislative relations.
c) The legislatures should revise the regulatory framework connected to the
procedural regulations: in relevant Articles of the charters, and in the
internal documents of the assembly, there should be included a clause declaring
the open character of the voting on the floor, and areas of anonymous voting
should be clearly designated.
d) Since legislative gridlock is often caused by frequent occurrence of the
parties blocking the passage of bills, which hinders the accountable performance
of both branches (the executive to a greater degree), legislatures are advised
to form a leadership body composed of partisan factions and group leaders,
i.e. an all-faction steering committee. The leadership body should have formal
powers to set the legislative agenda, create committees, divide up leadership
posts, and distribute deputies among the committees.
e) Since frequent situations of no-quorum not only slow down the legislative
process but makes the legislatures less accountable, deputies who fail to
turn up on the sessions and vote for the bills certain amount of times should
be subject to strict sanctions, up to denial of the mandate.
f) Legislative powers to control oversee and check the executive branch,
such as the right to ratify the appointment of vice-governor and key ministers,
the right to remove the governor and the government through an impeachment
procedure, and the right to override the governor’s veto power should be
clearly stated in the regional charter or constitution.
g) MPs should belong to the same party faction and vote according to the
party programme, as the party in whose name they run the elections. The new
edition of the “Law on Elections of the Deputies of the Duma of the Russian
Federation” adopted in April 2005, denies deputy mandate for those who leave
their party faction. This provision has to be adopted in the regional legislatures
as well in order to curb frequent switches from one deputy faction to another
h) The problem of independent deputies who still form the half of the legislatures
in a bulk of the regions and do not owe their mandate to any party remains.
Being directly connected to the electoral district, these deputies are bound
by electoral promises, which are usually specific to that district. The scope
of the policy decisions which lie outside these promises is far greater,
and as a result legislative powers of independent parliamentary members are
repeatedly used for particularistic purposes, indeed quite habitually they
are used for corruption to influence legislation. Independent deputies should
be required to join the party faction in the early stages of the service
and be bound to the faction discipline in the same way as party list nominees,
or form a separate chamber in the legislature with limited powers of lawmaking.
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